Sealing Salientia - Chapter 16: Revelations - Author: PenSmoke

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor make any profit from writing this.

Previously on Sealing Salientia:
It felt like Jiraiya had a new lease on ninja life. He immediately pulled out his sealing notebook, sat down and started going through it, Naruto peeking around his arms to read as well. All he had to do was just figure out how to write out the matrix that would put him back to normal.

Iron Country
December, Year 68

The thunderous crash of a gigantic impact reverberated against the rock walls nearby, briefly causing the waterfall that had been pouring serenely down the cliff to be blasted back from the shockwave. The area nearest the center of destruction witnessed a large wave rip through everything that left soggy grass and several inches of mud in its wake. Several trees that had formerly been standing nearby, now lay splintered into the forest, dripping with the backwash of the flooding. A few moments later, everything settled down. What had previously been a near idyllic paradise in the middle of the woods, now lay smashed and broken beneath the cause of the damage.

A new figure that rose like a small mountain into the sky had just popped into existence. A colossal reddish-orange skinned creature looked around the plane of existence it suddenly found itself in. The being was coated in large bumpy warts sporadically located around its skin and extended red lines accentuating his webbed fingers and slit yellow amphibian eyes. A puff of smoke several feet wide rose from the oversized pipe that he had in his mouth. What looked like a polished tree trunk was strapped to the creature's abdomen, held in place by a gigantic white bandage wrapping. A black open vest with a red circle on the back which encircled part of the kanji characters for "toad", completed the creature's outfit.

"Jiraiya! Why are you calling me out here today? You better have some sake ready as payment for yanking me to this plane after not talking to me for 4 years!" The loud, rumbling voice of the gargantuan toad rolled across the land, shaking everything nearby.

Two figures appeared through the dissipating haze from the shoulder of the summoned animal, one standing tall with white hair, the other one about half the height with blonde hair. The white haired one was smiling from ear to ear, while the platinum topped child was cheering loudly, whooping it up.

"Heya 'Bunta! Indeed, long time, no see. And don't worry, I got a couple barrels of fine sake stashed safely away from here so you wouldn't smash them with your feet. As far as why I haven't summoned you recently, well that's a long story. Let's get drunk first and I'll explain all about it."

The boss toad ignored his statement at first, breathing out another puff of smoke. After finishing the exhalation of vapors, he paused for a long time, appearing contemplative. "First, we drink. Then, you talk. Which way?"

The summoner pointed towards the top of the nearby cliff and the large toad hopped up with a single bound towards it. Naruto cheered and whooped some more as he hurtled through the air, only being held on by Jiraiya's firm grip around his waist. Once the higher vantage point had been attained, the humans hopped off the large amphibian's back and exposed the sake from under its protective cover. Handing one barrel straight to the giant toad, he poured a healthy serving from another to celebrate.

Gamabunta used his sword to pull out the top of the barrel and used it as a cup, drinking about a quarter of the barrel in one gulp. Upon consuming enough alcohol to kill most humans in a single swig, he swished it around in his mouth for a moment and then gave a toady smirk. Jiraiya had brought the good stuff, nothing less would do for the boss summons.

"So, a question for you, 'Bunta. When was the last time you saw Minato?" After receiving the answer of the night of the Kyuubi attack, Jiraiya delved deep into what had happened. Minato's facing down of the Kyuubi and sealing it away. The Uchiha taking the Hokage position. His loss of use of his hand. Jiraiya leaving the town and taking care of Naruto. The revelation of creating seals to replace his lost chakra. And that he summoned the toad boss to prove to himself that he was back to normal.

The trio spent the next hour talking and catching up on what happened. The toad boss mostly just let his summoner speak, enjoying the taste of the good sake that had been brought. After the conversation had started to catch up to modern days and waned off, Gamabunta summed up what happened pretty easily. "So, you're telling me, Minato is gone, you screwed up and now this boy is the only reason you can summon again?"

After a moment, Jiraiya had to agree, that was a pretty effective summation of the last three years. He felt that he deserved some credit, Naruto had only given him the inspiration for the replacement of handseals, it had still taken him two months to figure out the matrices and design and get them tattooed onto his body in such a way that he only had to tap the correct symbol and it would do that particular array of chakra manipulation. Now, instead of handseals flickering around and using up both hands, he could use one hand to manipulate the chakra to prepare a technique, while using a weapon in the other hand to press an attack. Even then, without Naruto none of it would have been possible, so he had no choice but to mutely agree with the summoned creature.

The boss toad let loose another laugh, allowing the resonance of his belly to echo across the hillside. He took another swig, emptying the last of his second barrel and swallowed it loudly. "Sounds like he should be the toad summoner, instead of you."

Jiraiya's face transformed into a pout for a moment. "Bunta, why do you always like my students better than you like me?" Then, after finishing that sentence, an idea popped into his head. "Actually, that's a great idea! Hey Naruto! You want to be able to do cool ninja techniques, right? How would you like to summon someone like Gamabunta here to help you in a fight?" He looked over at his young charge, sweat dropping as he realized that Naruto had fallen asleep next to him. A quick elbow jab to the side of the boys' ribcage fixed that issue.

"Huh? Whazzat?" Naruto mumbled, nearly incoherently.

"You want to be able to summon toads like Gamabunta here?" Jiraiya repeated.

"Eh…" The boy shook his head from side to side, seemingly both answering no and shaking the cobwebs of sleep from his brain. "What good are frogs going to do in a ninja battle?"

"Jiraiya, I changed my mind, that whelp isn't worthy of it. Frogs… FROGS! Do I look like a frog to you boy?" Gamabunta's voice rose in anger. Jiraiya knew that comparing a toad to a frog was a most heinous sin for the large creature. Some of the smaller ones might not have minded, but the boss toad was certain to take offense.

The geta clad man made a shushing motion to Naruto, "Keep quiet for a moment, kid." He then got to his feet and with a charka enhanced jump landed back up on the shoulder of the giant salientia summon. He spoke in hushed tones to the toad, "The brat is just a kid, he doesn't know all of that yet. Besides, it's Minato's boy. I'd love for the toads to continue down the line. Log knows I won't be having any kids."

Bunta replied out loud, oblivious to Jiraiya's whispers trying to initiate a more private conversation. "Obviously that brat is the other brats' son. I could tell that by just looking at him. That doesn't excuse comparing me to a frog, though." Bunta glanced at his summoner whose skin now matched his hair. "What's got you all in a twist?"

Jiraiya now carried a harsh tone as he responded. "I hadn't told HIM that yet, ya big oaf."

Gamabunta had the decency to at least try to look ashamed, even though the expression didn't translate as well to his amphibian facial structure. "Oh."

"You're damn right, 'Oh.' Now I gotta explain a whole bunch of stuff to him." The sage looked down at his newest apprentice and as expected the boy was looking up at him curiously. The voice floated up a moment later.

"Uh… hey Pops? What's the frog mean that I'm the other brats' son? I thought I was your son?" The boy looked slightly confused and slightly worried, with just a look of sadness splashed across the rest.

Jiraiya sighed. "You caused this Bunta, you owe me sake next time." The man leapt off the toad's shoulder and landed gracefully on the ground a couple feet away from the boy. "First off, it's toad. Don't call them frogs, it's insulting." He sat down next to the boy, pulled him in close and launched into the tale he was hoping to have told when they were all a few years older.

"You see, as the big dumb toad just revealed, I'm not your biological father." Jiraiya started as Naruto tugged his sleeve.

"Bi-ah-loj-call? What's that mean?" Naruto looked even more confused now.

"That word means that you are related by blood. And even though I've raised you, I'm not the one who helped to make you. Your biological parents were ninja of Konoha like me. One of them was my last student Minato Namikaze. Your mom was a woman named Kushina Uzumaki. I'll tell you all about them another time, I have a ton of stories to tell from their lives. But they died the night you were born."

"Did they die because of me?" Naruto's eyes had already teared up. "Why are you raising me then? Are you still my dad? I don't understand!"

"Naruto!" Jiraiya went into sensei mode and brought out his no-nonsense voice. The blonde child immediately straightened up, as that voice always meant to pay attention or else. "Your parents did NOT die because of you. Get that thought out of your head this moment. They died fighting the Kyuubi, a great nine-tailed demon kitsune that threatened to destroy the village where you were born. They were heroes of the village and loved you very much." Naruto wiped at his eyes, but remained silent.

"Next, I'm raising you, because I was your father's sensei and he looked up to me like a father figure too. I'm your godfather, which means it fell to me to take care of you when they couldn't. And, if you want to, you can still call me Pops or consider me your dad. After all the time we've been together and everything that we've done, I feel like you're my own son as well." Naruto did burst into tears at this point and buried himself in Jiraiya's garments. The older man draped his arm around the child, thanking Log that the boy wasn't running away from him right now, but instead seeking comfort in him. After a couple of minutes, the tears dried up and the sobbing stopped.

Struggling through a drippy nose and the hiccups from his outburst, he asked, "Why haven't we ever gone home then? Do I have any other family there? Is there anything else?"

Jiraiya sighed again. He hadn't wanted to tell Naruto the entire truth until the kid was much older and much more mature. But, he already had started and the floodgates were open now. He might as well tell the child everything.

"There are two very important things that you need to know. I need you to pay attention because these are vital." Once he looked down to see cerulean eyes starting back at him, he continued. "The first of which is that your dad, the Fourth Hokage died sealing the Kyuubi into a container. The only container that was able to hold it was a human with Uzumaki blood. Your mother had been the previous container and you were the only other option. He sealed it into you. I know you've seen that odd mark on your stomach before and I explained how it was a seal like you had seen me make other times. That's what is sealed inside, the chakra that makes up the Kyuubi. Do you understand?"

Looking back down, Jiraiya spotted wide eyes and an open mouth. "I'm a demon?" was softly uttered from Naruto's throat and just barely carried up to the sage's ears.

"NO!" The shout made both Naruto and Gamabunta startle. "No." Jiraiya repeated more calmly, as he took out a basic sealing scroll and a stone from next to them. "What is this?" he said, pointing to the scroll.

"Paper?" Naruto said, confusedly.

"And this?" Jiraiya pointed at the stone.

"A rock?"

"And what happens when I do this?" He touched his fingers to the correct spots on his chest to activate the sealing technique and the stone poofed into non-existence, while marking appeared on the scroll.

"The rock goes inside the paper."

"Exactly. Now feel the paper. Look at it. Tap it. Taste it, even. Does it feel in anyway like a rock?" Jiraiya handed the scroll to the boy, who examined it for a minute poking and prodding at it, even tearing a corner of it off.

"No, it's just paper."

"That's right. Because you have something sealed inside of you, doesn't make you that thing. It's no different between the seal dividing that paper from rock, or the demon chakra from you."

Naruto nodded slowly. "And what's the other thing you wanted to tell me?"

Jiraiya swallowed, this could go one of two different ways. "The other is that everyone aside from myself and two other people think that the container of the Kyuubi is dead. You were ordered to be killed in front of the council when you were only one day old. Sarutobi-sensei, the third Hokage, his ANBU Commander and myself worked up a plan to save you, which ended up with you coming with me. They thought they killed you, when in fact, they cut apart a replacement that I made." He ended slowly, not sure how much of that would be able to be processed by such a young mind, even if the kid was smart.

As expected, when he looked at Naruto, he saw a range of emotions, but mostly confusion. "Why would they want to kill me though?"

"Unlike you, the people in the village didn't understand the difference between the paper and the rock, even when explained to them. To be fair, many of them had never felt anything like the Kyuubi before and it terrified them. They thought that having you around would mean having a demon child ready to kill them around. Even when Sarutobi-sensei explained it to them, they refused to listen. It's an important lesson. When someone is scared or fearful, they will do thing that don't make any sense." Jiraiya patiently explained, still wishing this had taken place later in life.

"Why should I ever go back then, if they don't want me? You always say that one day we'll go back to Konoha. What if I don't want to? I'll just stay out here in the woods!" Naruto yelled back at him.

Yet another sigh escaped the white-haired man's lips. "That will be your choice then. I wouldn't blame you. But, you should always give people a chance first. They never gave you a chance and that was wrong. You never giving them a chance either is just as bad, even if it is somewhat deserved."

Naruto sulked for a bit. "Fine," he replied, still stuck in petulance.

Jiraiya heaved an exhalation of relief. That went about as well as he thought that it could have, given the circumstances. "Now that we're all through with the heavy talk, back to what started all this. Would you want to summon toads? I use them all the time, your father used them too and I think it'll be a great link for you to both of us. Plus, they're really awesome in battle."

"How can they be awesome in battle, they don't even have hands?" Naruto asked.

"How about I show you?" Jiraiya walked away a step or two and then hopped back up to Gamabunta, who had been sitting there listening to it all.

Speaking to the toad he had just perched upon, Jiraiya said, "Hey, 'Bunta, let's show this brat what a true warrior can do. Let's do Toad Flame Bomb, but up in the sky. Then slice it in half with your sword. That should impress him."

"Will it get him to stop calling me a frog?"

"Possibly, the kid has a thing for nicknames though. You can always beat it out of him later, if needed."

"Fine then." And with that declaration, Gamabunta tilted his head back, puffed up his cheeks and let a torrent of oil spew forth from his mouth. A second later, Jiraiya tapped a couple more seals on his chest and lit off a fireball on the oil stream, igniting the whole thing in a giant conflagration that detonated in the evening sky, temporarily turning the dusky hues of sunset to be blindingly bright for miles around. A miniature sun expanded from the fireball, illuminating everything nearby, the oppressive heat could be felt thousands of feet away. With a loud 'shing' of metal sliding against metal, Gamabunta stopped spraying oil and pulled on the polished tree trunk at his side, revealing that the wood was just the handle of a massive blade. Even though it looked like a short sword in the boss toad's webbed hands, it had to be at least 50 feet long and several feet wide. With a hop, the toad jumped up to the edge of the fireball, slicing at it. Cleaving the fireball in two, a line broke through the center, gleaming white from the energy left inside. As the toad descended, the fireball above stopped burning brightly and exploded with a force large enough to vaporize the nearby stream entirely and set the tops of several trees ablaze. Gamabunta quickly spewed some water on the blaze and after a minute, the stream started flowing slowly again.

Jiraiya hopped off of his summon and strode back over to Naruto who was laying on his back, eyes still fixated on the sky above, slight singe marks on various parts of the body and clothing. The man snapped his fingers in front of the dumbstruck child's vision a couple of times before a few blinks happened and the images seemed to finish processing.

"THAT WAS AWESOME! Can I do that? Please? Please? PLEASE?!" Naruto was practically begging him.

He looked up at Gamabunta, who nodded, perhaps feeling guilty for revealing a secret. The old toad was typically very curmudgeonly, only kicking back if a large amount of sake was drunk. What Jiraiya had presented earlier was nowhere near enough. It took a full three S-class missions pay to order enough sake for the boss of the toad clan to get drunk. Jiraiya's wallet had cried each time he had to prepare such tribute.

Unraveling the scroll from his back, he opened it up a little bit, enough to show Jiraiya's name, Minato's name beneath and the several blank spots underneath. "Write your name here Naruto. Do you remember how?"

The child enthusiastically nodded, sloppily scribbling his name in the space. It was barely legible, but that was all that was needed.

"In order to summon a toad, you'll need a lot of chakra, way more than anything I've ever had you use before, okay? You'll probably only get a tadpole if anything, so don't be too disappointed. Teenagers who are chunin often don't have enough chakra to get a decent sized summon. The handseals are Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram. Do you remember how to make those?"

Jiraiya helped hold the boys fingers in the correct places, making sure that the boy was focusing on getting it right. Once Naruto had run through them several times and got the placements correct each time, Jiraiya stepped back a couple of steps.

"Now, Naruto, channel as much chakra as you can for this. Make the seals while pushing as much as you can handle of chakra going out from your system. When you make the final seal, slam your hands of the ground." Naruto beamed, finally getting to try a ninja technique for the first time and screwed his face up in concentration, trying to dig up the chakra from his body.

Jiraiya wondered for a second if maybe Summoning wasn't the best thing to start with, but the boy was always unpredictable and would definitely need a strong bond with the toads eventually, best to get him started young. That slight wonder turned into a huge worry a moment later when he felt the chakra flare emanating from the boy.

The energy spilled out from his frame like blue waves of an ocean kicked up by a hurricane, splashing over everything. It was physically pushing him back from the pressure exerted from just the energy alone. Jiraiya's eyes flew wide open at the sheer energy radiating from the boy. The intensity of it was insane, most jonin that he knew couldn't replicate this much energy. Hell, he wasn't sure that even he could push back a person with just residual force from gathering his chakra. This was WAY too much.

He was just about to reach out to stop the boy, when Naruto finished the final seal and slammed his hands down on the ground, yelling "Summoning Technique!" A gigantic cloud of smoke instantaneously enveloped both humans and Gamabunta, stretching hundreds of feet in circumference across the trees of the forest, obscuring everything within.

AN: Oh noes! What's going to happen? You may think that this is too much power for Naruto to have so young, as canon Naruto didn't show that level of energy bursting from him until the fight with Haku, but I have my reasons. They will be explained next chapter.